Aboriginal Study Week – Salmon

img_4957

During the week of November 14th – 18th we had visits from Ms. Brandi Price, our Aboriginal resource teacher.  We spent three lessons that week learning about salmon, and its importance to the coastal First Nations peoples.  We heard three different stories: Simon and the Salmon; The Salmon Twins; and P’esk’a.  Students learned how to remember the five different types of salmon by doing a ‘hand’ activity.

img_4958

They also were introduced to some of the shapes that are used in Aboriginal art, and the traditional colours used. For the northern coastal bands are red, black, white, and sometimes a bit of yellow.  They used these colours to complete a salmon picture.

img_4960

img_4961

img_4959

We learned about a few ceremonies and performed a salmon dance in the classroom.  It was a fun week.  We look forward to our next visit with her in the New Year.

 

Remembrance Day at Rosser

img_4955

We had discussions on Remembrance Day and why we commemorate this particular day.  We looked at these two books.

Students created poppies.  Some for our class wreath which we took to Confederation Park and laid on the cenotaph during our ceremony …

img_4954

and some we did through a directed drawing lesson …

img_4953

These were drawn onto white paper, outlined with black crayon, and then painted with red and green paint. Once these were dried they were cut, re-outlined, and then glued onto green construction paper.  We had a discussion on complementary colours – those that are opposite to each other on the colour wheel.  Red and green are complementary colours.  This is why they ‘pop’ when put next to each other.

Other complementary partners are:  blue/orange; and yellow/purple.  Each primary colour has a secondary colour as its complement.

Some of these poppies are on the bulletin board in the office; the others are on the smaller bulletin board in the hallway outside the office.

We also had a great outing to the Confederation Park cenotaph on Thursday morning. The students were solemn and respectful; the Division 2 leadership students put on a great assembly; Mrs. Schwarz told some great stories about life in the wars; and the weather was spectacular.  It was nice to see some parents join us for this outing.

Fall Scenes

img_4948

We spent some time experimenting with colour theory by using the three primary colours – red, blue, and yellow – to create some interesting looking variegated leaves. We used leaves cut out of special colour diffusing paper.  On one of the leaves students coloured it with the three primary colours using food colours; with the other one they used Solucryl water colour paint.  Most students enjoyed using the food colours better than the paints, with this particular paper.

These leaves are placed around the bulletin board in the hallway which holds our bat pictures.  These bat pictures are the students’ third bat drawings.  We initially did two directed drawings of the same bat on regular drawing paper.  The students then created this same bat drawing on grey construction paper.  They could then add some background details that would be found in the Fall.

Fin’s Friends

This is a programme from the Vancouver Canucks organization which focusses on personality traits involved with social and emotional learning.  We will be doing several lessons over the course of the school year.  We began our lessons by discussion some personality traits such as: kindness; friendliness; and perseverance. We read a book called, “I Like Me”, which is about a chubby pig who likes herself for being just the way she is – whether she is on her own or with others.  Students then thought about things that they like about themselves – things they are good at doing, how they treat others, etc.

They then created wishing well art pieces with their written statement about themselves incorporated into the art.

img_4950

I look forward to many more lessons over the school year.

 

 

Halloween Celebrations

Next Monday we will be celebrating Halloween at Rosser.  Here is the schedule for the day:

9:00 a.m. – Halloween Assembly and Costume Parade – our Grade 2’s will be presenting their Fall poems!

** Students should come to school in their costumes prepared for this early assembly. They may bring a change of clothes for after the assembly if they will not be comfortable in their costume all day.  A reminder that Burnaby School District has a “No weapons” policy which includes any ‘toy’ weapons.  Please do not send any of these ‘accessories’ to school with your child’s costume.

10:45 a.m. – Pumpkin Carving with our Div. 2 buddies

** These pumpkins will be taken to the Confederation Park Train for their Halloween display.